I only lost 1 Sickle Pear out of about 60 trees I planted over the last 16 years. It was a bare root I bought in '08 mail order and never sprung in spring. I seem to do fine with potted trees I buy.
How do you do with potted vs. bare root trees in ground?
Most of my potted/bagged apples seem to be having a growth spurt. But I also freshly trimmed rootstock branches out as well. Currently my problem is one type of green with brown striped grasshopper. I kill over a half dozen a day and they keep coming. Voracious!
A potted tree is a bare root that has been potted for a year?
Anyways⌠i think going forward instead of worrying and babying the trees that i get from the nurseries that only ship in the spring⌠i am just going to pot them and plant everything in the Fall. Sure i will have to water them but not really worry so much about voles or forgetting this or that or all the things that can happen with planting in the ground in the spring.
If a shipper sends me bare root in the fall i will plant that bare root in the ground.
I think most all of the âfast growing treesâ are just bare roots that get potted and tended to for a year or twoâŚ
YMMV but thats what i think i have learned the hard way.
I havenât lost a tree I got as potted due to the tree failing to take. (Not counting vole damage or exceptional freezes or flood&freeze.) The few times my bare root trees failed, it was generally due to damage while they were out of soil, or due to pathogens getting into the damaged roots (clean cuts are not a given) or dried roots, or too few roots left after severe pruning(nursery) to have a chance to take if spring turned very dry and we were not on site to water.
Nowadays, I buy bare root in autumn on order and in spring only in person, when I can select the tree myself. Unless Iâm feeling lucky.
All things being equal, in-ground trees will do better than potted trees. Potted trees require YOU to see to their every needs. In-ground trees can survive on their own without any outside help (caveat: as long as they are in an area suitable to their nature). If you go on vacation and something happens to your irrigation system, then those potted trees not getting any water will be in trouble In-ground trees have a wider and often much deeper root network where they can draw moisture from. If they are in a very dry climate, they still may not make it if they lose their irrigation, but theyâll have a better chance.
Stop feeding a potted tree? Itâll eventually fade and die as it uses up all the nutrients in the pot. An in-ground tree will usually put roots out much further than its own drip zone, so will be better able to pull required nutrients. I fertilize my in-ground trees in the spring and then rarely give them any more. I have to fertilize my potted trees on a more regular basis.
It is just circumstance, but twice in autumn my bareroot and potted trees order arrived just after an unexpected rain+hard freeze. I did not worry about the potted trees, but had to go and get bagged potting soil (my soil and compost were rock solid) and pot them up for a week or two before getting all of them in the ground. Nothing happened of course, but I was very happy for the thaw.
Iâve bought plenty of both potted and bare root on line. Never lost a potted one. About 60/40 on the bare root. The problem with the bare root trees is when they harvest them for sale tons of root are lost in the process. You wind up nursing it for a couple years while it rebuilds the roots. Once upon a time they took more care in digging them up, but for most companies those days are over. Some companies sell potted plants that they spray the soil off to mail bare root. Those have done great for me.
What is interesting is Treco recommends trimming roots on their root stock to stimulate new root growth.
Everything of mine is in pots 
I was going back and forth with a guy named Alan about potted or in ground blueberries a few days ago and he pulled up a study that said blueberries can produce twice as much in pots than they do in ground.
I use a solar powered irrigation system for the stuff out in front when i donât want to hand water but i love having everything in pots or raised beds.
I do hope one day that Iâll put some things in ground but right now, weâre renting until further notice so everything is in pots. I donât have to worry about moles, mice, or anything digging up the roots thankfully and i can tell which raspberry is which 
cause they canât really escapeâŚ
I do like watering my plants and feeding them a little more often but they seem happy overall. With the big pots, until they get REALLY big, you can water less often during the high heat months.
Because Iâm able to give exactly what each plant needs when it comes to fertilizing and such, the fruits taste better to me.
Overall, it might be a little more expensive but i think itâs worth the effort. Plus you can keep your plants smaller that way. If you have smaller ones like me, it makes it so they can reach the fruits easier. If you really want to keep them less than 10 ft like myself and keep them bonsai like, you can pull it out during dormant season, take off some roots and repot it every year or so. Canât do that with a regular in ground tree
Not just trees, but everything seems to grow a little faster in pots to me. The growth from the bottom of the raspberry was all of just a day and a half from me potting it up. Berries are cleaner as well. But again, i check all my plants with my little one almost daily and diagnose any issues i see as soon as i see them. A lot of people may not have the type of time on hand like i do but if you do, i suggest trying to grow them in pots 
Oh, i also put bare root into pots as well when i get them. The only bare root trees that have died on me, all came from Raintree and they sent them dead to begin with or severely struggling. My persimmon from them had literally one big tap root that was chopped in half and about 3 tiny roots⌠i knew as soon as i got it that it would be dead no matter what.
The thing with bare root is that itâs more risky most times. With potted, you know itâs alive but bare root⌠if you donât do it right, it could die before you even start.
I have a white Pakistan mulberry from one green world that i thought was dead down to the graft so i stuck it on the side of the house for the last 4 months. I even brought it with me from Colorado to Washington because why not⌠i bought it in January⌠its now finally putting out some growth just RIGHT above the graft area that i thought was dead 
Yes, but some nurseries seem to read âlight trimmingâ as hacking away most of the root system leaving the tree with something that resembles a thumb, index and middle fingers in total, rather than a âroot systemâ. In turn, I read that as âan ICU patientâ not âa bare root treeâ. And thatâs probably the root of the problem as @Robert has pointed out.
I wish theyâd send me a reasonable root system and leave the trimming to me.
I know a nursery that posts representative photos of bare root trees and plants from each species they sell online to show people what to expect, because it apparently is a problem.
Treesofantiquity.com and grandpasorchard.com sent me trees with a good root system this last bare root season. Also they had tiny white roots starting when they got to me and the trees looked really healthy + well branched as well.
The one from stark is dead-dead
I have next to zero experience with KEEPING trees in pots (which was not the topic) other than bonsai and blueberries, which are a different kettle of fish. I donât, because too much hangs on the quality of soil (+pathogens), possible overheating/freezing of pots and overall assistance /pampering. I also have the space and like really big trees and food forests.
My experiences are related to growing trees that were purchased in pots vs bare root and planted in ground.
As a sidenote, I remove most of the peaty soil the potted ones come with before planting and give the roots a light trim.
Potted trees that have leafed out in their pots have already passed the test of survival from in-field transplant. If theyâve been allowed to grow roots for a season, they are gong to be partially root-bound but also benefitting from a root system that wonât be cut when they are planted in the ground, however, in my experience, most potted trees are bare root trees after the previous growing season and are not well established in their pots prior to being sold. If planted immediately, the potting soil often falls away from the roots. But if the feeder roots are kept moist, the trees may establish more quickly than a tree planted at the same time that is a fully dormant bare root tree.
However, it is much more efficient for trees to be dug, shipped and sold bare root and trees with large root systems cannot be sold in pots without sacrificing most of that. Potted trees mostly benefit sellers that need to have them sit around waiting for buyers. They cost more both money wise and environmentally wise than direct purchase of bare root trees.
In my bearing age fruit tree nursery I sell 2.5" trunk diameter trees in 25 gallon pots and also as bare root trees freshly dug up in fall and spring. Those in pots started as in-ground trees in fabric âpotsâ in real soil. I move the real soil into the pots and surround it with a fast draining potting mix, cutting a lot of the finer functioning roots that grow outside the bags in the process.
The potted trees do very well as long as they are watered regularly during rainless stretches after transplant, but voles sometimes like the surrounding potting soil to get them started on eating the root systems. However, this is not a frequent problem.
A big bare root tree will not put out much top growth the first year and usually shouldnât be allowed to bear any fruit, but its greater root mass placed directly in the native soil will pay off by the third year by usually surpassing the potted tree that was the same size at transplant. By the 4th the bare root transplant will usually be larger with more crop.
For the whips you buy either in pots or bareroot, Iâm not sure the difference will be as dramatic. I no longer put trees directly in pots, but when I did, it worked well for pears and apples, but not stone fruit whose roots require more soil.
I should add that some trees perform relatively poorly as bare roots, such as pears, paw paws and persimmons. It comes down to the nature of the roots themselves. Trees with roots that rapidly produce a system of fine roots work best as bare root transplants.
I do not grow large bare root pear trees and always start them in Whitcomb in-ground grow bags. Growing them in pots is a very slow process, and at my site I can produce bearing trees in these bags withouth irrigation.
Iâve bought almost all bare root. And have lost very few over the years. Have planted a few that I grew in pots myself. On those the roots are often a mess. Give me bareroot any day.
Persimmons are indeed the hardest tree Iâve tried bare root. Usually, they are very slow to get started with only weak growth the first year. Like many nut trees they seem to grow roots before top.
I have to say on the 150 trees I got from Treco, some worried me as barely having roots. Seemed pronounced in P.2. But all came through though. But yes, some trees looked like ZZ Top beards. Others not nearly as much. And the few with a scraggly root or two. Now a cautionary note; I buy seconds for the 20% discount.
Based on their current inventory, I will have to buy firstâs to get the size P.22âs I want. It will be interesting seeing their quality next season.
You know, at the beginning of this June (25°C) I bargained at a local nursery to get some struggling bare root trees at 30% of the price telling them I preffered this type of gambling to lottery⌠(And that nobody was going to buy them dead in a few days when the temps rise, anyway.)
I ended up with just one Nijisseiki pear 1.8m whip, buds, no leaves, roots like three bare fingers (not a single hair root) and planted it in deer territory wrapped up to 1.2m (figured some trimming could improve its chances). It had 3 leaves by the end of June (not kidding) but is still alive and kicking and Iâve watered it maybe once during the whole of August, when we had a drought.
I did cheat a bit by soaking it in rooting hormone-spiked water for a day, though. (Iâm a wimp and donât like bad odds.)
